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Ginger Gorman: Troll Hunting (2019, Hardie Grant Books) 4 stars

n 2013, journalist Ginger Gorman was trolled online. She received scores of hateful tweets, including …

Review of 'Troll Hunting' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The author spent a ton of time, and energy into this book and there are many great details, but there are some things I wish the author did differently.

"As the saying goes, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

They don't talk about their experience when they were trolled online, they do cover it a little different, it would have been nice to hear their experience since they tell the story of so many others who were trolled online. I know this may not have been the point of the book, but if there is something who doesn't know their history (before writing this book) it would have been nice to cover it.

Since the author is Australian there were some words that I had to look up the definition of, I'm not sure if that is because of how the author writes or if I need to expand my word reach.

There are a couple of times where it was confusing who was saying something, so it would have been nice to include the names of people more often.

The author talks about the experience someone (who shared their story) had with the police which was nice. While the words mention at least one experience, I feel like the author is pro-police.

"yet during my own research for one of the case studies in this book, my questions about how NSW Police investigates cyberhate cases went unanswered despite repeated requests"

"You have to wonder, if the police had actually acted on his initial complaints, if any of this would ever have happened."

"‘Trying to expose these people doesn’t … necessarily require any particular dark web skills. We did it through old-fashioned journalism, which was spending hours and hours and hours trawling through his public social media profiles and putting two and two together. And I think the cops could have done that, but they didn’t.’"

It's unclear in a couple of places where the author mentions "the book", if they are talking about the book you are reading or another book.

Since the author had a publishing date, they are unable to provide an ending to all the stores they covered which leaves the book a little bit unfinished in spots.

There are some spelling and grammar mistakes that I noticed, not sure if it's just in my copy or in every copy.

"‘Victims could go offline but it would make their lives worse,’ she writes, referring to all the lost opportunities and social connections cyberhate targets forgo when they are forced offline"

"it raises an interesting question about whether, as a community, we’re inadvertently outsourcing decisions about justice and law enforcement and hate speech into private hands. Should private companies – as opposed to policing and government agencies – have dominion over whether domestic violence perpetrated online ‘violates their policies’?"